


Literature

by Suzelle



Series: Blades and Bucklers [5]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Bisexual Cassandra Pentaghast, Book: Swords and Shields - Varric Tethras, F/F, Gen, POV Cassandra Pentaghast, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition Quest - In Your Heart Shall Burn, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:34:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26447887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suzelle/pseuds/Suzelle
Summary: In the bitter hours after Haven, Cassandra and Dorian find common ground.
Relationships: Dorian Pavus & Cassandra Pentaghast, Female Inquisitor/Cassandra Pentaghast, Female Lavellan/Cassandra Pentaghast
Series: Blades and Bucklers [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1914196
Comments: 4
Kudos: 29





	Literature

**Author's Note:**

> In the initial Guilty Pleasures cutscene Dorian says Cassandra lent him Swords and Shields, and I have been absolutely beside myself imagining what could have led to this transaction. Voila! 
> 
> Thanks as always to Salvage.

Grief and despair engulfed Cassandra in the mountains, a crashing wave like nothing she’d known since Anthony, when her brother’s head rolled to her in the dust and destroyed the girl she’d been. But she could not falter, not when so many lives depended on her still, and she stumbled mechanically through the motions of setting up camp alongside soldiers who looked as lost and alone as she felt. Lavellan’s absence took the form of a vortex in her heart, and she thought she caught tears on Varric’s face when she passed him tending to the injured.

When they found Lavellan, Cassandra practically fell to her knees, but the half-frozen elf beat her to it, collapsing forward to face-plant into the snow. She and Cullen each took an arm and carried her back to the camp, Shohreh deliriously muttering something about a beef sandwich. Their people surrounded them with astonished cries, but Cassandra barked at everyone to stay back, clearing a path so they could lay her on a cot in one of the triage tents. Only the Tevinter mage stayed, his face stricken, and when Cassandra tried to evict him he turned to her with a wordless growl fierce enough for her to step back.

He knelt beside Shohreh, shimmering heat enveloping his hands, and he gently tended to her half-frozen extremities. She yelped in indignation, a stream of Elvhen curses escaping her, but Dorian placed a hand to her brow while Cassandra watched in despair, murmuring soft words that seemed to calm Shohreh. By the time a breathless Solas reached them Dorian had finished his work, and Shohreh drifted off to sleep, but not before she made a rude gesture at the apostate elf.

“Well, she’s certainly still herself,” Solas said dryly, and disappeared back into the night.

Cassandra took her pent-up anguish out on Cullen, a shouting match about their next steps loud enough for the whole camp to overhear. When Josephine broke them up she was breathless with misplaced anger, and she stomped back to the tent where Shohreh lay, her enmity leaving her at the sight of the Herald unconscious, her cheeks still flushed from the cold, the steady rise and fall of her chest the only indication she might yet live.

“You have a lovely voice, you know,” Dorian said. He had not moved from his spot beside Shohreh, knees drawn up to his chest, arms clutching each other for warmth. “Quite musical, the way it echoes down the mountains.”

Cassandra snorted. “I’m told it’s the accent.”

“Hah. I’ve got one of those too, and it’s never gotten me any compliments.” 

“Perhaps you should shout more,” Cassandra said, and took a seat beside Dorian. He watched Shohreh with the same concern and tenderness Cassandra felt, and she remembered how he defended them both at the trebuchets, casting barrier after barrier while Shohreh aimed the catapult. Yet another person she’d misjudged terribly since this all began.

“Thank you,” she said softly. “I know I have not been the most welcoming or trusting. It’s in my nature, I’m afraid. But all you have done for us, for her…”

“Say no more,” Dorian replied, looking strangely uncomfortable. “I’m terribly allergic to sincerity, and I suspect you are as well.”

“You could say that,” Cassandra said with a wry smile. They settled into silence, broken only by a frightened-sounding moan as Shohreh stirred in her sleep. Cassandra shifted so that she knelt beside her, running a gentle hand along her forehead, and she murmured an old Nevarran hymn until Shohreh settled back into quiet, the darkened tattoos on her eyelids visible once more. 

“Truly extraordinary, isn’t she?” Dorian breathed. “Any Dalish would be perfectly justified in tossing me straight into the Fade. Yet she’s been nothing but kind. Oh, an absolute nightmare, to be sure, but all the same.”

“You have no idea. You weren’t with us when she accidentally shoplifted in Val Royeaux.”

Dorian chuckled, his fond gaze back on Shohreh, and a strange, unnamable feeling stirred in Cassandra. He was particularly attractive, even shivering and bloodstained, and she wondered at the motivations driving his affections toward the remarkably lovely woman who’d become her friend.

No way to determine but to ask. “Are you and she…I mean, do you have…”

Dorian stared at her quizzically, and then he burst into full-bellied, pealing laughter that could have lifted the whole camp. “Oh, my dear Seeker. You misunderstand entirely. If there’s anyone here I plan to seduce, it’s your taciturn specimen of a Commander.”

It was Cassandra’s turn to burst out laughing. “I wish you luck. He’s absolutely clueless to the flirtations he’s received here, from men and women alike. Too much Templar in him.”

“Hmm. Perhaps I’ll try the Qunari.”

Now  _ that  _ pairing intimidated even Cassandra. Still, it was a balm to indulge in idle speculations of romance, an eye in the storm of bitter defeat. They fell back into silence, Dorian turning his attention to muttering complicated-sounding spells that warmed the whole tent, and Cassandra brought over her pack from where she’d tossed it beside Leliana’s things. She always kept it nearly full, on the road as often as she was, but she’d stuffed the remainder of her belongings into it in haste before the battle and it was woefully disorganized. Methodically, she emptied the pack and set everything into a neat semicircle around her. 

Dorian watched her as she worked, and his eyes lit up in interest at the trio of books she’d stacked between her gauntlets and soap. She froze, praying he would not look too closely at the titles.

“I didn’t peg you as the literary type.”

Cassandra arched an eyebrow. “We warriors have more to us than punches and grunts, you know.”

“Indeed.” Quicker than lightning, Dorian reached for the top book before Cassandra could stop him, and his eyes widened in surprise.

“’By Varric Tethras’? Forgive me, but I thought you and the dwarf hated each other.”

“That’s an exaggeration.” Heat rose to Cassandra’s face, trapped under Dorian’s inquisitive stare, and she stammered wordlessly before she collected herself. “For all his flaws, he is a very good storyteller. You can’t tell him, though, please.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Dorian reassured her, and she watched helplessly while he flipped through the book. “Ah. Romance and passion. It appears our tastes are more aligned than we thought.”

“Really?” she asked in surprise.

“I’m from Tevinter, Lady Cassandra, where bloodlines and breeding overrule any force of love. Where else could I turn but dark alleyways and literature?”

She knew little of dark alleyways, solitude ruling her life ever since she parted from Galyan, but bloodlines and breeding she understood. What else had first driven her to the fiery, passionate volumes in her uncle’s library, before she barely understood herself and her desires, but the burning need to escape the constraints Nevarra placed around her?

Some ungodly force possessed her, driven perhaps by the horrid desperation of their circumstance, and she said, “You can borrow it, if you’d like.”

Dorian blinked rapidly, and then his face softened in gratitude. “Thank you. I believe I shall, if you truly mean it. Maker knows I could use something uplifting after all this.”

“Take it,” Cassandra said. “Just be sure to return it in once piece.”

“I will care for it like my own,” Dorian promised, and glanced once more at Shohreh, still sleeping soundly on the cot. “Though I’d ask you to apply some lessons from it, when she awakes.”

She had no idea what he meant by that, but before she could ask Leliana’s shrill voice cut across the campsite. She turned to see that she and Josephine stood mere inches from each other, two dear friends shouting at each other in the dark, and she stood up with a heavy sigh. It would take a miracle from the Maker for them to survive long enough for Dorian to return the book to her.

***

The blasted man betrayed her weeks later, when Shohreh caught her reading in the training grounds, passing by with a fleeting insult that only made the situation ten times more embarrassing. She wondered, as she dug herself deeper into the hole, whether it was possible to die of mortification, and she finally stopped herself before she made an even greater fool of herself in front of the Inquisitor.

“Pretend you don’t know this about me,” she said darkly, and walked toward the barracks with as much dignity as she could muster. She sank down onto a table bench, burying her head in her hands, and let out a muffled groan just as the sound of footsteps intruded on her despair. She looked up to see Dorian, his mustache curled upward as he grinned at her, and let out a disgusted noise.

“ _ You _ ,” she scowled. “That’s the last time I lend you anything.”

He chuckled, clearly unrepentant, and took a seat across from her. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist. You know we have a sumptuous library, with plenty of pornography hidden behind the shelves that far surpasses Ser Tethras in quality.”

“It’s not the same,” Cassandra snapped. She would not dignify him with an explanation of how the terrible, overwrought writing was half the draw.

“Well, now you know that she will not judge you,” Dorian said. Cassandra groaned again, but he sat beside her and patted her amiably on the shoulder. “My dear Seeker, she was utterly charmed. Surely you know that girl well enough by now to know she has her own flair for idealistic passion. Surely you know her regard for you.”

She answered with a third wordless groan. Dorian gave an impatient sigh and shook his head.

“You’re utterly useless, the both of you. Sort out your feelings, Lady Seeker, before you lose your chance. If you don’t act soon, Cremisius Aclassi’s going to pin her down, and I couldn’t stand it if she involved herself with one of my countrymen, even a disavowed one.”

His pronouncement washed over her like a douse of cold water, and she stared at him blankly, too dumbfounded to do anything else. He patted her on the shoulder again and left, humming a dreadful little song to himself. She heaved a great sigh and stared down at  _ Swords and Shields _ , the riotous cover taunting her, and picked the book back up. Her head swam too much to do anything more than read.


End file.
